Perfection

On Saturday afternoon, January 9, the Metropolitan Opera in New York broadcast Live in HD Der Rosenkavalier to movie theatres around the world.

A. Did you enjoy it?

B. Yes, very much, thank you. A very good production.

A. That’s not quite enough. Naturally it was a good production. After all, it was done by the Met. Had you seen it before?

B. No, never.

A. But you had seen other Met productions Live in HD in the cinema?

B. Yes, two or three. And I had seen a few operas on the stage, here in Toronto. I even have The Marriage of Figaro on DVD. And I occasionally listen to operas on the radio on Saturday afternoons.

A. Well, then, where would you rank Der Rosenkavalier?

B. Oh, near the top. What did YOU think of it? You’re the expert. You’ve given courses on opera.

A. True. I’ll tell you later. I first want to hear what you have to say.

B. Well, the music was full of good tunes. The scenery was glittering. The singers were excellent. The staging was beautifully done – it all looked lovely. The women were beautiful, especially Renée Fleming as the Marschallin. And it’s a good story – amusing and touching, a little sentimental, which I like, and there is a lovely comic villain, Ochs von Lerchenau, who gets his well-deserved come-uppance at the end. He had done nothing worse than make passes at all the girls.

A. Not quite. His real villainy was that as a member of the aristocracy he thought he was entitled to all the good things in life, whatever the damage he caused. Including a rich bride who detested him.

B. I guess that’s true. I was impressed that the Icelandic singer who played him, Kristinn Signumdsson, seemed to be able to manage the Viennese dialect without any difficulty.

A. So was I. What else did you like?

B. The lovely trio at the end.

A. So why, then, do you say you rank the production near the top? Why not at the top?

B. Okay. You win. I should have said at the top. I can’t think of any other opera production I like better. And, come to think of it, I can’t imagine any other company doing it better, anywhere. I would even go further – I would say I don’t see any point in the Met, or any other opera company anywhere in the whole wide word, trying to stage another production of Der Rosenkavalier. It can’t be done better than this one. All they need to do is show the videotape of this one. It was perfection.

A. You have said all the things I wanted you to say. Thank you. Now you must let me give you a lecture.

B. Go ahead. I am listening.

A. First of all, in opera, and in all the arts, it is highly improper to say “This is the best.” By what criterion? You liked this Icelandic Ochs. Others may think he was a ham. You say you like stories that are a little sentimental. Others may call them kitschy. Or they may think there was no need to hold back when singing the trio at the end. Would your criterion be a comparison with Figaro? You say you have the DVD. You must know it well. Strauss intended Der Rosenkavalier to be a twentieth century Figaro.

B. How interesting. I didn’t know that.

A. Think of it for a moment. Both operas satirized a member of the aristocracy for making use of his traditional rights at a time when they were about to be abolished because times had changed and they were no longer acceptable. Both operas had at their centre a tragic, melancholy beauty, the Countess in Figaro, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. Both ladies had to resign themselves to the painful realities of their situation. And both operas contained elements of deliberate gender-confusion: Cherubino was written for a soprano, and so was Octavian. Young male lovers played by women in trousers. Highly interesting, sexually speaking.

B. So it is. Very intriguing.

A. And there is something else. Der Rosenkavalier was first performed in 1911. Largely thanks to the Marschallinn it conveyed a sense of sadness, of bitter-sweet nostalgia for an era that was about to vanish. It was as though it anticipated 1914. And Figaro was based on a revolutionary play by Beaumarchais that had been censored in France and banned in Vienna. Mozart’s opera was first performed in 1784. Five years later – the mob stormed the Bastille.

B. I had never thought of that.

A. Good. So you’ve learned something. Now I come to the most important point. You said, “you win” – the production was perfection, and there was no point in anybody ever doing one again. Of course you didn’t mean it – you only said because I was pushing you.

B. True.

A. Because if you meant it – what point would there be in having a musical life at all? Concerts and conservatories? In art, there is no such thing as perfection. There must be continuous striving. And every generation requires new interpretations. How many recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons do you think there are in the catalogues? Or of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony?

B. A few dozens, I guess.

A. Hundreds! And even after the world hears me play The Moonlight Sonata there may still be somebody in Outer Mongolia who can play it better than I – by somebody’s standard.

B. I cannot imagine that.

A. Nor can I.